


Thunderstorm

by jeffcatson



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Tentacles, Outside Night Vale, existential non-angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 22:05:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffcatson/pseuds/jeffcatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Keep a flashlight and a childhood photo album beside you, just in case." If Cecil's self disappears, Carlos finds himself thinking, absurdly, where would he find himself again?</p>
<p>For the prompt: Cecil is frightened of a thunderstorm, Carlos comforts him with science facts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thunderstorm

Carlos comes half-awake at the boom of thunder, and wonders groggily why he can still see lightning behind his eyes, and why it is yellow and steady, one-two-three long seconds after the sound has faded (and isn't he counting the wrong way around?) Confused, he cracks an eye to see the bedside lamp shining, Cecil sat up in bed, knees against his chest and - shaking? Without moving, unwilling to drag himself further out of sleep, he angles his open eye upwards and cocks an ear and is just about to start working on getting in a deeper breath, ready to start up his larynx and groan in complaint at the late hour, when he sees Cecil's hands are covering his face. His eyes are squeezed tight and there's a low, steady murmuring coming through his fingers, as though he's struggling to remember something, as though it's the most important thing in the world.  
  
Oh, hell. Scared of thunderstorms? They haven't yet slept through a storm together, but his partner - the Voice, who calmly and steadily talks Night Vale through whichever surreal horror is plaguing the town that afternoon - being afraid of a few atmospheric electrical discharges isn't something Carlos had expected at all. Cecil still has a way of surprising him.  
  
Carlos lets out that groan, quietly. It's late - far too late for this, he needs to sleep, he needs to be fresh and ready for the morning's presentation. They'd taken the trip out of Night Vale as Carlos had to make his twice-yearly report and research funding renewal application back in Boston, and he'd figured that some company, and getting to show Cecil around his old university town, would round off the trip rather nicely. Things had gone well so far, considering it was Cecil's first trip away from home since Europe - and, well, Carlos still harboured suspicions about that, though he knew better than to question it outright.  
  
Cecil had loved exploring the big mall, with its endless stands of colourful, sugary snacks, and he'd seemed to enjoy expounding at length on the fragility and insignificance of human existence as they'd walked along the waterfront, looking out over dark blue ocean stretching out forever. They had run into a little trouble with local police forces while on the road: two officers clearly new on the job and keen to boost their numbers by pulling over the two non-white men in a station wagon, getting a little nasty when they'd seen there was nothing with which they could charge them. Carlos had kicked himself for being surprised when it happened, and had been a little ashamed that it drew more of a rise out of him than he'd expected, after almost two years of living with Night Vale's local lawmen (law-beings?) keeping an eye on him.  
  
The odd looks they'd received when checking into double rooms in the little rural motels along the road seemed to have gone completely over Cecil's head, for which Carlos was grateful. He wouldn't have believed that the townsfolk had never batted an eyelid at either Cecil's queerness or his noisy flaunting of it on air, had he not been pulled aside himself by Old Woman Josie (flanked by two Erikas, silent and a little menacing) in the supermarket, her stern face a mixture of "now, you're a lovely young man and do come over for tea sometime" and "hurt Cecil in any way and the town will absolutely eat you alive feet-first, you mark my words", but never, in no way, "well, we don't quite understand it but we'll give ourselves a few liberal points by talking with you anyway", as he'd experienced with grandparents, teachers, classmates, but - now he thinks about it - never in Night Vale.  
  
In any case: the visit had been great, he'd loved showing Cecil around and having the company, things had really been fine. Cecil had even steadfastly ignored the mountain range on the way to the coast, and Carlos had decided to let that one go. It was just, well, this was the last night he could have done with having to deal with a problem.  
  
Carlos groans again, slowly dragging himself up from the depths of sleep. He gets one limb, and then another, into motion, sits up slowly, dragging blankets with him, wraps legs and then arms around Cecil. Clears his throat, carefully. "Hey. Hey, hey - love. Sweetheart, what's wrong?"  
  
Cecil leans into him, cold and shaking slightly, and doesn't answer. He sounds as though he is rattling off a list. Pancakes every other Sunday with Old Woman Josie out by the car lot overlooking the invisible corn fields, he'd bring jam or chocolate spread for them both, they'd gossip and laugh and he'd keep an eye on the household tasks before the angels came to help out. Packing a huge rucksack for his trip around Europe, his mother painting his fingernails a sparkly turquoise the night before he goes, which he then leaves to chip off slowly, flakes of glitter still visible and feeling like a link to home, and all that is beautiful and familiar, even two months later. Interviewing for the intern position at NVCR and wearing smart long sleeves and a tie matching the station colours, then seeing the current Voice come out in an artfully torn Dark Owl Records t-shirt with tattoos swirling right down to his wrists, and smiling at that, relaxing immediately. The memories pour out in a soft, sonorous monotone not too far removed from his radio voice, and there are many that Carlos hasn't heard before, so he rests his head on Cecil's shoulder and simply listens.  
  
Minutes pass, the rain pours down, and Carlos understands: of course, in Night Vale thunderstorms lead to power cuts, and power cuts lead to that strange memory loss that Cecil had talked about, when he'd advised the townsfolk to keep a flashlight and a childhood photo album nearby, just in case. Carlos doesn't recall ever seeing photo albums in Cecil's house. He's occasionally seen him smudge a few charcoal symbols into a small notebook he keeps by his bloodstone circle just before coming to bed, but he's never shared the contents. Even his Facebook wall, in contrast to all his excited pronouncements and over-sharing on the radio, is kept to the occasional piece of useful municipally-approved advice, reminders of the evening's show starting soon, or a cute cat video. If Cecil's self disappears, Carlos finds himself thinking, absurdly, where would he find himself again?  
  
Cecil is slowing down, and Carlos strokes his back gently, fans his hair out over his shoulders, eventually says in a break in the flow, "hey, love, it's okay, it's okay, I'll remember for you" - silly words, nonsense words, but still - "and hey, hon, you know that doesn't happen outside of Night Vale, right?"  
  
Cecil focuses on him. "How do you know?", he asks, seriously. "What makes you think it doesn't happen?" Carlos considers that, and yes, well, most places don't have friendly local police keeping an eye on the populace with up-to-date listening devices and an operative stationed outside every house, or uncannily perceptive local radio hosts ready to send assistance to anyone who has grown extra limbs or eyes and needs help adjusting. Strange things happen everywhere, and even worse, ordinary things happen every day, and it's completely normal for people to get ill and die and to do so all alone, and no, Carlos does not know.  
  
"Okay. I'll remember with you. What's the most important thing? What would you like me to remember first?" Cecil raises an eyebrow and smiles, flirtatious and besotted even in his panic. There's more of his radio voice coming through now, and he starts describing Carlos' arrival in Night Vale, almost two years ago now. Carlos puts his head back onto Cecil's shoulder, and listens.  
  
He's calming down now, the worry tiring him out and giving way to yawning. "What about you? What do you need to remember? Or, what are you thinking about now?"  
  
"Come here - lie down with me, turn off the lights, and I'll tell you." Somewhere, Cecil seems to have found candles, and Carlos leaves one flickering as he wraps Cecil up in his arms to lie on his chest and soak up the vibrations of his voice. Carlos has an idea. "Shall I talk to you about science?" - his partner nods, and he's shifting to get comfortable, breathing slowly and listening to the rain.  
  
"Okay. So. In my first year of undergrad, I was so excited by all the options on offer, so I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with learning about different fields. Must have started with twice the usual number of modules, it was brilliant. And one of them was on earth sciences. That's where we learned about the science of thunderstorms. Would you like me to tell you about that?"  
  
Cecil turns his head, and he suddenly looks delighted. Carlos strokes his hair, and carries on.

"Okay. So you already know about how everything's made of atoms, and how they've got orbiting electrons, tiny negative charges - we were talking about that the other week, right? So, when particles rub up against each other, electrons can get knocked off some of them and attach to others, so that makes a charge difference. And that can sometimes happen in clouds" - Carlos feels an excited shiver go through Cecil, and he remembers how the Council censored his feature on clouds, but they're not in Night Vale now - "like when there are big temperature differences making the air rise and fall lots, all those particles bump up against each other and electrons go all over the place and that makes a big charge difference overall. With me? Cool. So. The negative charges all gather at the bottom of the cloud, and they're often so strong that they actually repel some of the electrons in the ground - some of them move out of the way, and that leaves the ground under the cloud with a positive charge. The positive and negative charges are attracted to each other, right? So they travel through the air towards each other - to rebalance the charge - and as they do, they make a spark, and that's lightning. And the lightning's really hot, cause it's electricity, right? Um - there's actually estimations it can raise the air temperature by twenty-seven thousand degrees, that's way hotter than even the surface of the sun, it's kind of amazing - and that makes the air around it heat up and expand really fast, and when the lightning's gone, the air rushes back into that space really fast, so much so it makes the sound of thunder. So that's what it is, that's what happens.  
  
"And it's happening all the time, all over the world -" he squeezes his eyes shut, searches his mind for the statistics - "they think it's something like, eighteen hundred storms going on all the time, there are over a hundred lightning strikes somewhere every second. It's brilliant. But, look - it's okay, I mean, sure, it's dangerous, but with the right kinds of precautions, it's not too hard to stay safe in a thunderstorm. They do hurt people sometimes, but with a bit of caution you can avoid the worst of it fairly easily" - and Cecil's hiding his face and shaking again, this isn't helping, why isn't it helping? Carlos thinks back to his radio broadcasts, with their disarming honesty and incredibly frank bleakness, and he understands.  
  
He squeezes Cecil's shoulders, and continues. "The odds of being struck by lightning in one's lifetime is about one in three thousand, higher than shark attacks, or most extreme sports, actually. Many people die, often from a cardiac arrest, 'cause the heart makes its own tiny electrical signals to cause the muscles to beat in sync, and other electrical impulses - particularly something as huge as lightning - can confuse it, see? And, um, of those who do live, they can suffer severe burns, or -" and here he suddenly remembers a scribbled-down, marginal note, and his stomach turns over - "ah, brain damage. Including... personality changes, and, um, memory loss."  
  
"I told you", Cecil mumbles, shifting over towards the pillow and cracking into an enormous yawn. "Everything that makes us, us - it's all so fragile. Strange to think that our very selves could be utterly destroyed by a little spark, or a knock to the head, or a bit too much time alone with our thoughts in the darkness. We can so easily disappear, even if this bag of meat that we naively call 'ours' remains living and sentient and may even go on to have a completely different, and just as fulfilling, existence. In any case - thank you, love."  
  
A few short months back, Carlos knows he would have lain awake for hours more in existential terror. Now, he just feels a wave of affection for the half-asleep man sprawled out beside him. After two years in Night Vale, he seems to be finally learning the language. He kisses Cecil's forehead, and murmurs a last reassurance. "Everything is going to be all right. Nothing is ever going to be all right." Carlos leans over, and blows out the candle.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is the first fic I've ever published. I'm fairly new to all this, and anyone's most welcome to come and say hello on [my Dreamwidth](http://alreadystardust.dreamwidth.org/).


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